Who Murdered Mickey Thompson and Why It Took 19 Years to Prove…

Today, we’re focused on the murder, the business deal that went bad, the man who stole half a million dollars and couldn’t accept that he’d have to pay it back, the 19 years it took to put him in prison. By the time we’re done here, you’re going to know every detail of this case.

The crime scene, the investigation that went nowhere, the witnesses who were too scared to talk, and the trial that finally ended it. Our story begins in earnest with a simple question. Who was Mickey Thompson? And why would somebody pay to have him killed? I’ll keep this part brief because the racing history deserves its own video, but you need to understand Mickey Thompson wasn’t just some guy. By 1988, he was a living legend. First American to break 400 miles per hour.

Set 485 national and international speed records. Designed the slingshot dragster that became the template for top fuel cars for 20 years. Changed how Indianapolis 500 cars were built. Started Mickey Thompson performance tires, which is still around today under Goodyear. The guy was in more halls of fame than just about anybody in motorsports. When he walked into a room, people knew who he was. But what matters for this story is what Mickey Thompson was doing in the 1980s.

And that’s where we meet Michael Goodwin. In 1979, Mickey created something brand new. He’d been racing off-road in Baja for years, the desert races, the Baja 1000, and he loved it. But he had a problem out in the desert. Nobody could watch. He was putting on incredible shows for cactus and jack rabbits. So he brought the desert to the fans. The Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group, MTEG, staged its first stadium off-road race at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1979.

They trucked in 25 million pounds of dirt, built jumps and obstacles, and let trucks and buggies tear each other apart in front of paying crowns. By the mid80s, MTEG was selling out stadiums across the country. 85,000 people at Anaheim Stadium. Average attendance over 40,000. Mickey had invented stadium off-road racing. It didn’t exist before him. Now, here’s where Michael Goodwin enters the picture. Goodwin was born February 4th, 1945. He created Supercross, Stadium Motocross Racing. His first event was at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1972, and the format caught on fast.

By the early 80s, Supercross was averaging 57,000 fans per event, third highest attendance in American motorsports behind NASCAR and Indie Car. Goodwin knew how to promote stadium racing. Mickey knew how to run off-road events. On paper, a partnership made sense. April 1st, 1984, Thompson and Goodwin signed a deal. Goodwin got 70% ownership and operating expenses. Thompson got 30%. They’d run an 18-month engagement period before fully merging their operations. It lasted less than 7 months. Here’s what happened.

The first events under the partnership, Hooserdome in Indianapolis, Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan, lost money, not unusual for new ventures. But then Goodwin came to Thompson asking for $60,000 to cover bills from Indiana. Thompson paid. Then Goodwin asked for another $17,000 from Michigan. Thompson paid that, too. He wanted to make sure the staff got their paychecks. Goodwin, according to testimony, didn’t pay his share of anything. By October 1984, Thompson had enough. He went to court. The judge dissolved the partnership and gave Thompson back control of MTEG.

But the money Goodwin had taken, that didn’t come back with it. May 1986, California Supreme Court. The judge ruled that Michael Goodwin had stolen more than $500,000 from the partnership. The judgment came down. $514,000 awarded to Mickey Thompson. With fees and interest, it worked out to somewhere between $750,000 and $793,000. Now, here’s where you start to see what kind of man Michael Goodwin really was. When the Los Angeles Times asked him about the ruling, he basically admitted it.

Said the judge decided he’d screwed Mickey real bad and now he had to pay for it. But he also said something else in that interview. He said he wasn’t a people person, that all he cared about was results. And if somebody had a contract with him and didn’t perform, he’d take their legs off to get them to perform. Take their legs off. That’s the language he used in a newspaper interview. Remember that. So Goodwin owes Thompson $700,000 and the court has ordered him to pay it.

What does he do? He starts hiding money. September 1986, his company SMC changes its name to Entertainment Specialties Incorporated. then immediately declares bankruptcy. November 1986, Goodwin files personal bankruptcy. December 1986, the company’s assets get sold to a brand new outfit called SuperX Incorporated. And who are the principles of SuperX? Goodwin’s wife Diane and a business associate. And then this is the part that gets me. Guess who SuperX hires to run the company? Michael Goodwin. $240,000 a year.

So, the guy declares bankruptcy to avoid paying the judgment. Then his wife buys the assets. Then he gets hired back to run everything he supposedly just lost at a quarter million a year. The bankruptcy court eventually figured out what he was doing, but it took time. And while the lawyers were fighting, Goodwin was getting angrier. 1987 made everything worse. Anaheim Stadium put its exclusive racing contract up for bid. This was the big one. Both Thompson and Goodwin wanted it desperately.

Thompson won. Goodwin publicly stated that his Supercross series couldn’t survive without Anaheim. That’s how important this contract was to him. Mickey Thompson had just dealt what could have been a fatal blow to his business. And then Mickey did something that probably wasn’t smart, but you have to understand how much bad blood existed between these two. As part of collecting on the judgment, Thompson seized Goodwin’s MercedesBenz and he drove it to the courthouse in front of Goodwin. I’m not defending that decision, but I’m telling you what happened because it shows you how personal this had become.

This is where we have to talk about the threats because this is what ultimately convicted Michael Goodwin. Over the course of the investigation and trial, 15 separate witnesses testified about things they heard Michael Goodwin say. 15 people. These weren’t rumors or secondhand accounts. These were people who heard him directly. He told people he was going to kill Mickey Thompson. He said he’d have him wasted. He said Mickey wouldn’t see a dime because he’d be dead first. He told multiple people he was too smart to get caught.

One conversation in particular stands out. A retired cop named Bill Wilson, who managed one of the stadiums, testified about a conversation where Goodwin said he was going to take Mickey out. Wilson told him, “Nobody wins in that scenario. Mickey’s dead and you’re in prison. Goodwin’s response was that they’d never catch him because he was too smart for that. He said that to a retired police officer, too smart to get caught. Let’s talk about the money situation in early 1988.

January 22nd, 1988. Diane Goodwin pays a $40,000 deposit on a $400,000 yacht. They’re planning to buy a boat while Michael supposedly has no money and is trying to discharge his debt through bankruptcy. January 29th, 1988, the California Supreme Court affirms the judgment against Goodwin. This is the end of the line legally. He can’t appeal anymore. He owes Mickey Thompson approximately $768,000, and there’s no legal way out of it. February 9th, 1988. A restraining order prevents Goodwin from liquidating assets.

The court has figured out what he’s been doing and is trying to freeze everything. So, now you’ve got a man who’s been hiding money, who’s been threatening to kill Mickey Thompson for 2 years, who just lost his final appeal, and who’s about to have his asset seized. March 16th, 1988, 35 days after losing that final appeal. Mickey Thompson knew something was wrong. Three days before the murders, he told his sister, Colleen, that he was afraid Goodwin would hurt Trudy.

That’s his wife. A neighbor testified that Thompson had been receiving death threats since December 1987 from someone in the motocross and off-road racing industry. Mickey’s son, Danny, said his father told him Goodwin was out of control. Mickey Thompson was 59 years old. He’d survived crashes at Lacera Panameana in the 50s. He’d gone 406 mph at Bonavville. He’d walked away from wrecks that should have killed him. And now he was scared, not of racing, of Michael Goodwin. March 16th, 1988.

Bradberry, California. Bradberry is a gated community in the San Gabriel Foothills about 20 m east of downtown Los Angeles. It’s the kind of place where people move specifically because they want security, gates, privacy, safety. That morning, Mickey and Trudy Thompson were getting ready to leave for the MTEG offices at Anaheim Stadium. It was just before 6:00 a.m., still dark outside. Trudy was 41 years old. She and Mickey had been married since the 70s. By all accounts, they were devoted to each other.

She was sitting in the idling van in the driveway waiting. Mickey was locking up the house. He came out through the garage. A gunman stepped out of the shadows. He shot Mickey Thompson, hit him in the torso. Mickey went down in his own driveway. According to the neighbor who witnessed what happened next, Mickey called out not to hurt his wife. lying there shot and his first thought was Trudy. A second gunman opened fire through the windshield of the van.

Trudy screamed for them not to shoot. The killers dragged her out of the vehicle. And here’s the detail that tells you this wasn’t a robbery. This wasn’t random. This was personal. They made Mickey watch his wife die before they killed him. Both victims were shot in the head at close range, execution style. The two gunmen then got on 10-speed bicycles and pedled out through the community gates, just rode away. Now, let me tell you what the killers left behind.

Trudy Thompson was wearing $70,000 worth of jewelry. The killers didn’t take it. Between the two victims, there was roughly $4,000 in cash. The killers didn’t take that either. If this was a robbery, they were the worst robbers in history. They killed two people and left behind more money than most people make in months. What they did leave at the scene, a stun gun that didn’t belong to the Thompsons. Spent 9mm casings, muddy shoe prints, and orange rind.

Orange rind like somebody had been waiting there long enough to peel and eat an orange while they waited for Mickey and Trudy to come outside. This was planned. This was patient. This was professional. 4 hours after the murders, they found a gray 10-speed bicycle abandoned down the hill from the neighborhood. The description of the shooters, two black men, early 20s to early 30s, approximately 6 feet tall, muscular build, wearing dark jogging suits or hooded sweatshirts. That description has never changed because those two men have never been found.

The same day as the murders, detectives contacted Michael Goodwin. You’re a detective. You’ve got a victim who’s been in a public, bitter financial dispute with someone. That someone has been telling people for 2 years that he’s going to kill the victim. The victim has been telling people he’s afraid for his life. First person you want to talk to, right? Goodwin agreed to meet with detectives, but only at his attorney’s office. And when he got there, he refused to be interviewed.

The prime suspect in a double homicide sitting right there, and he wouldn’t answer a single question. Here’s where the investigation started going sideways. Detective Michael Griggs caught the case. By all accounts, he worked it hard. He knew Goodwin was involved. Everybody knew Goodwin was involved. But knowing and proving are different things. The problem was evidence, or rather the lack of it. No physical evidence connected Goodwin to the crime scene. He wasn’t there. He’d hired people to do it.

The actual shooters were ghosts. Nobody could identify them. Nobody came forward with information about who they were or where they’d come from. There was no money trail. However good paid for the hit, if he paid in cash, if he used intermediaries, whatever he did, detectives couldn’t trace it. And here’s the thing about circumstantial cases. You need a lot of circumstantial evidence to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt. Motive isn’t enough. Threats aren’t enough. You need to build a wall brick by brick.

In 1988, they didn’t have enough bricks. Griggs worked the case for 4 years. He retired in 1992 without making an arrest. The case went cold. This is what gets me about this story. Michael Goodwin basically got away with it. Let me tell you what he did. In the months after Mickey and Trudy were murdered, the Goodwins bought $275,000 in gold coins. Cash purchases hard to trace. They wired $400,000 to offshore accounts. They completed the purchase of that $400,000 yacht.

Remember, Diane had put down the deposit 7 weeks before the murders. And then in August 1988, 5 months after Mickey and Trudy were shot to death, the Michael and Diane Goodwin sailed out of the country. They didn’t come back for over two years, just left, sailed away on their yacht while a double murder investigation sat open with their name all over it. Now, here’s where it gets even more frustrating. When the Goodwins finally came back to the United States, it wasn’t because of the Thompson case.

It wasn’t because their conscience bothered them. July 1993, Michael Goodwin got arrested for bank fraud. Completely separate crime. Nothing to do with Mickey Thompson. The FBI caught him running a scheme involving false financial statements. October 1995, Goodwin and his wife Diane were convicted on 12 counts of bank fraud. August 1996, he got sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and a $300,000 fine. So, the guy who ordered a double murder went to prison, but for bank fraud, and he served 30 months, less than 3 years.

He was parrolled in July 1998, 10 years after Mickey and Trudy were executed in their driveway. The murder case still unsolved. But Mickey’s sister never stopped. Colleen Campbell had been pushing this case from day one. She talked to detectives constantly. She talked to reporters. She talked to anyone who would listen. When Goodwin got out of prison in 1998, Colleen posted a $1 million reward for information leading to a conviction. $1 million. That’s how badly she wanted this solved.

A detective named Lillianfeld tried to bring charges to Los Angeles County prosecutors around this time. He’d put together what he thought was a solid case. The prosecutors declined. Said there wasn’t enough evidence. Imagine being Colleen Campbell at that moment. Your brother and sister-in-law are dead. You know who did it. Everyone knows who did it. And the prosecutors say they can’t prove it. But she kept going. 2001 changed everything. America’s Most Wanted rebroadcast the Thompson case. John Walsh talking about Mickey and Trudy showing photos asking for tips.

And for the first time in 13 years, new witnesses started coming forward. See, here’s what happened. A lot of people had heard Michael Goodwin make threats back in the 80s, but they were scared or they didn’t want to get involved or they figured it wasn’t their problem. 13 years later, some of those people had been carrying this around. They’d watched Goodwin walk free. They’d seen him go to prison for bank fraud and get out. And something about seeing that America’s Most Wanted episode made them pick up the phone.

People who’d heard the threats, people who’d seen things they’d never reported, people who’d been afraid to talk in 1988, but had lived with it for over a decade. The case files started getting thicker. August 12th, 2001, detectives arrested Michael Goodwin and put him in a lineup. Witnesses identified him, but then something went wrong. The evidence was presented to a grand jury in Orange County, and the grand jury declined to indict. Goodwin walked out again. Four more months passed.

December 13, 2001, Orange County filed charges and arrested Michael Goodwin for the murders of Mickey and Trudy Thompson. 13 years, 8 months, and 27 days after they died. Now, the legal process got complicated, and I mean really complicated. Goodwin’s lawyers immediately challenged the charges. Their argument, jurisdiction. The murders happened in Bradbury, which is in Los Angeles County, not Orange County. They had a point. Orange County had filed the charges because that’s where some of the witnesses were.

That’s where some of the investigation had been conducted, but the actual crime happened in LA. April 2004, the Orange County case got dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. Goodwin walked out again, but this time LA County was ready. They’d been building their own case, watching the Orange County proceedings, getting their ducks in a row. June 8th, 2004, Los Angeles County filed murder charges against Michael Goodwin. Same charges, different jurisdiction. Back to square one. October 6th, 2006, a judge reviewed the evidence and ordered Goodwin to stand trial.

November 7th, 2006, 18 years, 7 months, and 22 days after Mickey and Trudy Thompson were killed, the trial finally began. Pasadena Superior Court. Judge Terry Schwarz presiding. Michael Goodwin was 61 years old. He’d spent nearly two decades as a free man while Colleen Campbell and a handful of determined detectives refused to let the case die. I need to explain something about the prosecution’s case because it’s important for understanding both why it took so long and why it ultimately worked.

This was a circumstantial case, entirely circumstantial. The prosecution never found the two men who pulled the triggers. To this day, they’ve never been identified. They never found the murder weapons. They never found records of payment to the hitmen. No checks, no wire transfers, no nothing. They never found a witness who saw Goodwin meeting with the shooters were planning the murders. What they had was everything around those missing pieces. Let me walk you through what the prosecution presented.

First, the motive. Financial records showing that Goodwin had stolen over $500,000 from Thompson. Court documents showing the judgment against him. Records of his failed attempts to hide money through bankruptcy fraud. The California Supreme Court ruling that came down 6 weeks before the murders. By March 1988, Michael Goodwin was about to lose everything to Mickey Thompson’s judgment. He couldn’t appeal. He couldn’t hide behind bankruptcy anymore. The courts had figured out his games. Second, the behavior before the murders.

The yacht deposit in January, 7 weeks before the killings. The pattern of moving money offshore. A man supposedly broke enough to declare bankruptcy was buying a $400,000 boat. Third, the behavior after the murders, the gold coin purchases, the offshore wire transfers, sailing out of the country for two years. If he was innocent, why run? Fourth, and most importantly, the threats. 15 witnesses, 15 separate people who heard Michael Goodwin say he was going to kill Mickey Thompson for 2 years before it happened.

The prosecution brought those witnesses in one after another. The retired cop, Bill Wilson, who heard Goodwin say he was going to take out Mickey and responded that nobody wins that scenario. And Goodwin said he was too smart to get caught. Katherine Whis, who heard Goodwin on speakerphone telling Thompson directly, “I will take you out and you know I can.” Witness after witness testifying to the same pattern. Goodwin talking about killing Mickey Thompson. Goodwin saying he’d have him wasted.

Goodwin saying Mickey was [ __ ] dead. When you have 15 people all saying the same thing independent of each other over a period of years, that’s hard to explain away. The defense had their own strategy. No physical evidence. That was their main argument. There was nothing placing Michael Goodwin at the scene. His DNA wasn’t there. His fingerprints weren’t there. Nobody saw him in Bradbury that morning. And they pointed out something else. DNA found on the stun gun and under Trudy Thompson’s fingernails didn’t match Goodwin.

If he’d been there, wouldn’t his DNA be present? The answer, of course, is that Goodwin wasn’t there. He hired people to do it. That’s what a murder for hire is. the person who orders the killing doesn’t show up themselves. The defense also floated alternative theories. Maybe it was a robbery gone wrong. The killers were after gold coins Mickey supposedly kept at the house. Maybe it was connected to motorcycle gangs. Maybe it was someone else entirely who had a grudge against Thompson.

None of it explained the threats. None of it explained why 15 different people heard Goodwin talking about killing Mickey Thompson for 2 years before it happened. The trial lasted about 2 months. January 4th, 2007, the jury came back guilty. Two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances. The special circumstances finding meant Goodwin had committed multiple murders and had murdered for financial gain. Under California law, that meant he was eligible for life without parole. District Attorney Steve Kulie gave a statement afterward.

This 18-year ordeal for family members of Mickey and Trudy Thompson is now over. Justice has been secured. 18 years. That’s how long Colleen Campbell had been waiting. March 2nd, 2007, sentencing day. Judge Schwarz addressed the circumstantial nature of the case directly. It was a circumstantial case, she said, but the evidence was overwhelming. I can say it was the appropriate verdict based on the evidence. Michael Goodwin was given the opportunity to speak and what he said tells you everything about the kind of man he was.

I can’t apologize because I’m not guilty. It was a tragedy that they were killed. The world lost an incredible inventor. 18 years, a mountain of evidence, 15 witnesses, a jury verdict, and he’s still saying he didn’t do it. The sentence, two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. Colleen Campbell delivered a victim impact statement at the sentencing. She called Goodwin a coward and a bully who hired and arranged for shooters to kill Mickey and Trudy all for his self-indulgence, greed, and to accomplish his desired sinful plan.

Coward, that’s the right word. The man didn’t have the guts to do it himself. He hired two men to murder a 59year-old and 41-year-old wife in their own driveway. made sure Mickey had to watch his wife die first and then ran off to hide on a yacht for two years. If he was innocent, why run? Outside the courthouse after sentencing, someone asked Colleen what she wanted now. Her response, I just hope that he hurries up and dies.

I can’t say I blame her. Goodwin appealed. Of course, he appealed. January 26th, 2015, the appellet court reviewed his case and upheld the conviction. They called the evidence overwhelming. March 3rd, 2021, another appeals court denied his petition for re-sentencing. Every legal avenue has been exhausted. Every appeal has failed. So, where is Michael Goodwin today? He’s incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California. Inmate number F69095. He’s been behind bars since April 11th, 2007. That’s 18 years now.

He will never get out. Two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole means exactly what it sounds like. He will die in prison. He still maintains his innocence. There’s a website out there called Friends of Michael Goodwin that claims he was framed, that the witnesses were lying, that the investigation was botched. You can find people who believe him if you look hard enough. But 12 jurors who sat through two months of testimony didn’t believe him. Multiple appeals court judges who reviewed the evidence didn’t believe him.

And the family of Mickey and Trudy Thompson certainly doesn’t believe him. Now, here’s the part of this story that’s never been resolved. The two men who actually pulled the triggers, the shooters on the bicycles, have never been identified. Never. 37 years later, we don’t know who they were, where they came from, or where they went. We don’t know how Goodwin found them. We don’t know how much he paid them. We don’t know if they’re still alive. The case technically remains open.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department would still like to identify and prosecute the actual trigger men. The million-dollar reward that Colleen Campbell posted back in 1998, it’s still available. Nobody has ever claimed it. The DNA evidence from the crime scene, from the stun gun, and from under Trudy’s fingernails gets run through national databases automatically as new profiles are added. No matches have ever come up. Somewhere out there, two men know what really happened in that driveway on March 16th, 1988.

They know who hired them and how. They know details that have never made it into any court record. And they’ve kept quiet for 37 years. Let me take you back to something Michael Goodwin said to that retired cop, Bill Wilson. They won’t catch me. I’m too smart for that. He really believed it. That’s the thing. He wasn’t just talking trash. He genuinely thought he’d designed the perfect crime. And for 19 years, he was right. He got away with it.

He sailed around on his yacht. He went to prison for bank fraud, not murder, and served less than three years. He walked free while Colleen Campbell kept posting rewards and begging prosecutors to take another look. The only reason he’s in prison right now is because people don’t forget. Witnesses who’d stayed silent in 1988 came forward in 2001. Detectives who inherited a cold case kept working it. A sister who lost her brother refused to give up. Michael Goodwin thought he was too smart to get caught.

Turns out he wasn’t smart enough to stay caught. I want to talk about what this case cost everyone involved. Mickey Thompson was 59 when he died. The man had set 485 speed records. He was still working, still promoting, still building. The July 1969 issue of Hot Rod magazine had called him perpetual motion, and it was accurate. He never stopped. We’ll never know what else he would have accomplished if he’d lived. More records, more innovations. Maybe he’d have finally gotten that official two-way average over 400 mph at Bonavville that haunted him his whole life.

Trudy Thompson was 41. She wasn’t a public figure. She was just a woman who loved her husband and got killed for it because Michael Goodwin wanted to send a message. Think about those final moments. Mickey on the ground shot, screaming, “Don’t hurt my wife.” Trudy screaming, “Don’t shoot.” And both of them knowing in those last seconds exactly what was happening. That’s what Michael Goodwin paid for. That’s the scene he arranged because he couldn’t accept losing a lawsuit.

Mickey Thompson’s son, Dany, had to grow up without his father. Dany spent decades working on Challenger 2, the land speed car Mickey built in 1968, but never got to run because the salt flats flooded. On August 12th and 13th, 2018, Dany finally took it to Bonavville. 448.757 mph 2-way average piston powered wheel driven in his father’s car. Danny Thompson got the record Mickey never could. 30 years after his father was murdered. 58 years after Mickey hit 406.60 and the engine scattered before he could make the return run.

That should have been a moment Mickey got to see. Instead, his son had to do it alone. Colleen Campbell spent almost two decades of her life fighting for justice for her brother. Think about what that does to a person. every day waking up knowing who killed Mickey and Trudy, watching the investigators struggle, watching prosecutors decline to file charges, watching Goodwin go to prison for fraud and get out, posting a million dollar reward out of your own pocket because the system kept failing.

When she said, “I just hope he hurries up and dies outside that courthouse,” I believe she meant it. 19 years of carrying that weight and the best outcome she could get was her brother’s killer growing old in a prison cell. The Mickey Thompson murder case gets studied in law enforcement circles. Now, it’s an example of how to build a circumstantial case over time, how cold cases can be revived when new witnesses come forward, how persistence matters more than speed sometimes.

It’s also an example of everything that can go wrong. the jurisdictional problems, the prosecutors who declined to file charges, the decades of delay, a guilty man walking free for 19 years while the victim’s family suffered. If America’s Most Wanted hadn’t rebroadcast the case in 2001, would those witnesses have ever come forward? Would Goodwin have died a free man? We’ll never know. But it came closer to happening than anyone should be comfortable with. Netflix released a documentary series in 2024 called Homicide Los Angeles.

Episode 2 covers the Thompson murders. It’s called Race Car Killer. If you’ve watched that, you know the broad strokes, but there’s always more detail than any documentary can cover in an hour. The case has also been featured on Unsolved Mysteries, America’s Most Wanted multiple times, 48 Hours Mystery, Investigation Discoveries Murder Book. CBS even did a fictionalized version on CSI in 2004. Mickey Thompson was famous enough in life that his murder became famous, too. The story keeps getting retold because people can’t stop being horrified by it.

A legend in American motorsports executed in his own driveway over a business dispute. I’ve been thinking about something while putting this together. Michael Goodwin could have just paid the judgment. $768,000. That’s a lot of money, but he was making $240,000 a year running his wife’s company. He was buying yachts and gold coins. He had the resources. Instead, he spent those resources on hitmen. He spent 19 years looking over his shoulder. He spent his bank fraud trial knowing there was another charge waiting in the wings.

He spent two decades lying to everyone around him about what he’d done. And now he’s spending the rest of his life in a cell in San Diego. All because he couldn’t accept that he’d lost. He cheated Mickey Thompson out of half a million dollars. The courts caught him. And rather than pay what he owed, he decided murder was the better option. That’s not smart. That’s not calculating. That’s just a small man who couldn’t handle being beaten. Let me read you something Dan Gurnie said about Mickey Thompson.

Gurnie drove Mickey’s car at Indie in 1962. Mickey Thompson was a charismatic American go-getter, a trailblazer with an infectious and stimulating love for the automobile. He was a huge credit to Southern California hot rod racing. He and his wife Trudy are missed to this day. Missed to this day. It’s been 37 years and people still miss them. A family friend named Gary Campbell put it differently. All of us shared Mickey’s vision, but none of us was Mickey.

Where Mickey left his footprint, no one could ever quite fill it. That’s what Michael Goodwin took from the world. Not just two lives, a vision, a driving force, someone who invented things that didn’t exist before him and made the world more interesting. And for what? Because he lost a lawsuit. So that’s the whole story. The business deal that went bad. The threats that 15 people heard. The execution in the driveway. The 19 years of frustration. The trial that finally got it done.

The killer rotting in prison claiming he’s innocent. Two shooters still out there somewhere. A million dollars waiting for anyone who can identify them. DNA in a database that keeps searching and keeps coming up empty. Mickey Thompson was the first American to break 400 mph. He invented the slingshot dragster. He created stadium off-road racing. He held 485 speed records. And he died at 59 years old in his own driveway because Michael Goodwin thought he was too smart to get caught.